Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) is trying again. After learning a lesson or two, from his failed attempt to push an unpopular Election Reform bill (HR811) through Congress, he's scaling back in hopes of getting something passed that may help bring accountability to the 2008 election cycle.

We certainly applaud the effort in general, and note that it mirrors some of the simple, doable-by-'08 initiatives we've been speaking with a few folks in Congress about behind the scenes.

In brief, the bill we've been discussing, with several Congressional offices, after common ground discussions with a number of EI advocates, a representative from the National Association of Counties (NaCO) and even a Republican who had initially worked on the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), but disliked the resulting bill, would call for the following:

Money to states and/or counties who wish to move to paper ballot systems.

A requirement that all voters be asked before voting if they wish to vote on paper (and that those paper ballots actually be counted before unofficial tallies are released to the media).

Restrictions to no more than one DRE per polling place to marginally meet HAVA's mandate for voters with disabilities.

Holt's new bill would do a few, if not all of those things.

In his run at it this time, his bill would simply offer federal funding for jurisdictions who wish to move to paper ballots (that's good), and also offer money to help pay for post-election audits of those ballots...if they choose to do so. It also sets aside money for study of disability voting technology, as we'd also recommended.

Perhaps he has become a bit too timid after his previous unfortunate experience. Though the bill has not yet been introduced officially --- so language is not yet finalized, thus we'll hold full fire until we see the final product --- the audits recommended in his bill would be optional. As well, there are currently no requirements in his bill to mandate that Election Officials actually count those paper ballots, paid for with federal dollars, before releasing unofficial vote tallies to the media. That last is no small point (just ask Al Gore or Christine Jennings).

And most puzzling of all, in the bill which would only apply to the 2008 general election, there is also no requirement at all to make those federally-funded paper ballots available to all voters who'd like to vote on them.

It seems to us that if a state or county chooses to take federal money to pay for their paper ballots, attaching a few common sense strings, like the ones mentioned above, would be perfectly appropriate. Perhaps such changes can be made during the committee process or on the Senate side.

But hey, no bill's perfect, and this one certainly appears to be a welcome step, at least, in the right direction. It would help to begin turning the Titanic around by making the move to paper ballots much easier. And, most notably, it would not federally institutionalize secret software and Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen) voting machines as Holt's previous HR811 would have. That bill, and the many concerns about it, was exhaustively covered by The BRAD BLOG over the past year. (See our special coverage here.)

Re "As well, there are currently no requirements in his bill to mandate that Election Officials actually count those paper ballots, paid for with federal dollars, before releasing unofficial vote tallies to the media. That last is no small point (just ask Al Gore or Christine Jennings)."

Rather than fighting him on this point, present him with a choice to either: (1) add a requirement to his bill to mandate that a candidate cannot be officially sworn into office based on unofficial vote tallies, or (2) add a requirement to his bill to mandate that unofficial vote tallies cannot be released to the media.

Why couldn't Holt just throw his support behind Dennis Kucinich's HR 6200 bill instead of throwing in a new one? Whatever became of Kucinich's bill HR 6200?

(In fact, where is Dennis Kucinich? Are the Overwhelmingly Fascist Media and the corporate whores of the Democratic Party obfuscating his informed presence again? Afraid that his honesty will expose their lies and hypocrisy?)

Dennis Kucinich is a scrapper. I guess with friends like Shirley Maclaine, Dennis Kucinich doesn't need any enemies in politics. What was she thinking?! Besides, why is it worse to see something in the sky that you can't identify --- ie UFO (unidentified flying object) --- than voting to authorize an unjustified war based on lies, as the other Democratic candidates did? Why isn't the Overwhelmingly Fascist News Media asking those questions, if they are going to question people's judgment? I imagine, if anyone were around Shirley Maclaine, they'd likely say some BS about past lives, UFOs or whatever, just to make her happy, since we are a social animal and tend to say things to please others even when we don't necessarily feel committed to it. Besides, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter also said they saw UFO's (however, JC may be retrospectively qualifying it).

... the zapkitty wonders if commenters might ignore the ringing echoes of lost primary battles upthread and instead, perhaps, help analyze the currently available details of the latest Holt proposal as objectively as possible?...

... I should be posting my own thoughts on this later this evening, I think...

Zapkitty, or, instead of asking him to choose between (1) and (2) in my post above, try the following tactic:

(1) Ask him if he agrees that it's antithetical to our democracy for a candidate to be officially sworn into office before a verifiable vote count has been reached, and when he agrees (which he has to),

(2) Ask him how HE would amend his bill to accommodate this important aspect of ensuring that candidates who are not voted in by the citizens do not get installed through political cronyism and finagling.

I don't know about whether to trust Holt. I think there's clearly a possibility he's just new to the process and that's why he's making a second try on this important issue. I hope he's being sincere in trying to get some good legislation passed.

If he succeeds (and gains Brad's approval) he might be earning some wings to move up in House leadership. It ought to be interesting to watch, moreso since there's nobody else really working on the right kind of election reform legislation.

I agree that Holt's office has a sordid history of being sneaky and untrustworthy. Nobody should forget 811 began as a 5-page "paper trail" bill and morphed into a 62-page monstrosity representing another bonanza for the e-voting industry and federalized control of elections.

We can watch how this one unfolds.

In this bill, Holt includes (Section 4) more money for the "study" of his pet project, the ballot readback technology (the technology Mercuri hypothesized would likely enrich Avante, Holt's backdoor buddy). As well, sneaking in to the bill funding for this expensive and opaque technology is just another way to open the door for full scale implementation as designed in 811.

And, as predicted, Holt could not let go of his other two pet projects: empowering the EAC (although in this bill he is even more subtle about it than in 811), and audits. The EAC should be abolished, not given more authorization power, no matter how benign it appears, and the failure of post-election audits and their efficacy for ensuring election integrity has been thoroughly analyzed and proven in Simon and Odell's pieces on Universal Ballot Sampling.